SHI MIN CHUA
This interactive map illustrates the diversity of each of the 331 local authorities in England/Wales based on the census data of country of birth in 2021. Although diversity is typically defined by ethnicity, I chose to use country of birth instead, because I have found ethnicity can at times be subjective and ambiguous. For example, as a Chinese Malaysian living in UK, am I a Chinese or other Asian? I actually would prefer to be called Southeast Asian, but it is not one of the ethicity options in the census. Therefore, I chose to use country of birth as the proxy measure for diversity, given that it is a rather objective construct besides several exceptional cases, such as UK parents give birth to their children elsewhere.
The diversity score of an area reflects the proportion of people born in UK and the other 15 regions classified based on their country of birth (see appendix for details). The higher the score (coloured in shades of blue), the more heterogenous an area is in terms of people living there. Meanwhile, a lower score (coloured in shades of red) indicates a more homogenous group of people. In this analysis, the homoegenity of an area is mainly due to larger proportion of people born in the UK, such that there is a negative correlation of 0.99 between the proportion of UK born and the diversity score. This analysis on country of birth is also relevant to our understanding of migration into the country, for example where people born in other countries settle in England/Wales. The high number of shades of red suggests that England/Wale is not really overwhelmed by people not born in the UK.
Although some areas might have similar divesity and thus coloured the same on the map, the composition of the people in these areas may differ. To further understand the composition that leads to diversity, you could click into each local authority for the proportion of people born in UK and the other 15 regions, which will be shown in a pop-up (Note: Currently not functioning well on mobile phone). Let's explore the map before reading on my observation and other follow up analysis.
Most diverse areas, i.e., the blue shades in the map with diversity score >0.21, cluster in London and some major cities/towns outside of London such as Cambridge, Luton, Leicester, Oxford, Reading, Manchester, while south west, north of England, and Wales are less diverse, i.e., the red shades in the map. The colour seems to radiate from blue to red upon moving away from London and, to a lesser extent, from Manchester. Besides the blue shades, it is also worth noting that several local authorities -- Preston, Derby, Ipswich, Newscastle Upon Tyne, Exeter, Lincoln, Liverpool, with diversity score lower than 0.21 but higher than 0.13, are surrounded by some of the most homogenous areas with diversity score less than 0.06. This observation suggests that, unlike areas within and surrounding London that are similar in diversity and form a continuum of diversity, other cities/towns that are relatively diverse tend to be 'isolated' among a more homogenous region.
The following dot strip plot presents the diversity score distribution of each local authority in the 10 broad regions in the UK, offering additional perspective on regional differences in diversity on top of the map above. It clearly shows that all areas in London, as well as several areas in East and South East, are more diverse than the England/Wales as a whole, in contrast to only a couple of areas in Yorkshire and The Humber, South West and North East. The most heterogenous area is Brent, with a diversity score of 0.361, compared to the most homogenous area, Staffordshire Moorlands with 0.025. The diversity score across England/Wales is 0.153.
As mentioned earlier, the diversity of a local area could be driven by different compositions of people born outside of the UK. You might have examined the composition via the popup charts in the map. Here, I present the composition of the 14 local areas outside of London with diversity score above 0.21, along with the most diverse area in London, Brent in the marimekko chart below for comparison.
Across England/Wales, people born in Europe (7%) are the largest group born outside of UK, followed by those born in Southern Asia (4%). This pattern largely mirrors the local areas which are high in diversity, with Europeans making up about 9-18% of the population, while Southern Asians about 5-10%. This pattern is reversed in Leicester, Luton, Slough, Birmingham, which are settled by more Southern Asians (11-22%) than Europeans (7-14%), while Manchester has the same percentage (9%) of the two groups. People born in South and Eastern Africa also feature about 2-4% in these highly diverse areas, with percentage going up to 6-7% in Brent and Leicester. Perhaps due to the presence of reputated research universities and institutes in Oxford and Cambridge, there are also significant percentage of people born in Eastern Asia (3-4%), South-East Asia (3%) and North America (2-3%) settling in these two cities on top of people born in Europe and Southern Asia.
Lastly, I explore the potential explanation for the distribution of diverse areas by examing the correlation between diversity scores and mean GDP and economic activity status. This is based on the hypothesis that foreign-born people might be attracted to areas for job opportunities and wealth. For the economical activity status, I correlate the diversity scores with the percentage of people who are econonomically active based on ONS's definition, i.e., those currently employed, waiting to start a new job and those actively seeking employment. However, as seen in the two scatterplots below, no significant correlation is found, even when the relationship is examined separately in different regions, as indicated by different colours. It might well be the distribution of diverse areas in England/Wales can be related to historical reasons, as pointed out by The Economist's article "Without realising it, Britain has become a nation of immigrants". Unfortunately, the proposed explanations could not be explored with numbers here, but likely with qualitative analysis. Of course, after exploring the map, you might have other hypothesis about the diversity distribution in England/Wales, do let me know what you think!